(Newser)
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A Qantas Boeing 747 with 431 people on board landed safely in Singapore today after an engine caught fire minutes after it took off from the city-state, the airline and a passenger said. The problem arose just a day after a Qantas Airbus A380 superjumbo jet made an emergency landing at the same airport due to an engine blowout. "There was a loud bang and a jet of fire from the back of the engine," said one passenger.

The passenger adds that he could see the engine clearly. The blast happened "one or two minutes" into the flight when the plane had climbed about 2,000 feet, according to the passenger, who says the pilot stabilized the plane before returning to Singapore. Qantas said in a statement later that flight QF6 from Singapore to Sydney had an issue with its number 1 engine—one of four engines—and that the pilot returned to Singapore as a precaution. Click here to read why yesterday's explosion should scare us.

Australia had always been proud of Qantas' safety record, and it's still the only major international airline not to have a plane fall out of the sky. But there have been 'incidents' in the last few years and a lot of the blame here seems to be directed at the offshore outsourcing policy Qantas introduced a couple of years back. I have flown with them recently and have no qualms about flying with them again, but it's only a matter of time before something goes terribly awry.